Discord Town Hall/AMA Recap #2
Greetings, fellow Neopians!
Our second Neopets Metaverse Discord Town Hall and AMA was another rousing success! We are always grateful for the constructive feedback and inquiries from our community. Please keep asking questions, and we will continue to host these Town Hall/AMA sessions!
Here is the abridged recap of our Discord Town Hall/AMA #2. Enjoy!
Project Overview Discussion
Thanks, everyone, for tuning into our second town hall/AMA. I think we’ll begin with an introduction for those of you who weren’t here last time: Dominic, can you introduce yourself to us and elaborate on how you got involved in the blockchain space, as well as describe your role in Neopets Metaverse?
Sure, thanks to everyone for joining! I’m Dominic, project leader for Neopets Metaverse. I joined NetDragon a little more than two years ago. Originally I was looking at launching opportunities in the education space with a focus on the tech side. I’ve worked on building out private blockchains and revamping a lot of top-down level types of blockchain deployment. When we came across this opportunity of bringing Neopets into the web3 space, I got excited about the project as a Neopets player. I was pulled out of my original project and slated to lead this project forward. I’m still an advisor for the other projects, but almost all my effort and time is focused on Neopets Metaverse; I’m excited to build this team out, and hopefully, we can turn this into an amazing success in the future.
Cool! Thanks a lot for that intro. Can you please share about the Neopets Metaverse at NFT.NYC this year?
It was better than anything we could have expected! During the whole event, many people came to talk to us about Neopets and how excited they were that we were developing Neopets Metaverse. This is amazing, considering that we haven’t done much marketing outreach in the past. We’ve been slowly focusing on building out the game and game design and have been in building mode. We will be doing a lot more outreach in the next few months as we lead up to our alpha launch and all the other exciting updates we’re about to give. This was our first real-world event, and it’s exciting to see many NFT enthusiasts excited about Neopets Metaverse. A lot of them have played Neopets in the past. And they’re excited that we’re entering the web3 space. During the event, we grew our following on Twitter and other channels by over 2000 new followers, which are organic. Every day, more than 1000 people visit our booth. We also released a playable sneak peek of our Turmac Roll mini-game at the event. Nearly 800 people played the mini-game. We got great feedback and lots of nostalgic and thoughtful comments about how players reconnected with their childhood memories. It’s exciting to see that, in addition to the fact that we established many new relationships with potential partners at the event, especially with infrastructure players and other projects. We’re very excited to see how we can utilize these new contacts and collaborate going forward.
That’s great to hear. What is your favorite part about NFT.NYC for the Neopets metaverse, and is there anything about it that you could elaborate on?
The best thing is that it confirms our hypothesis that many people who already embrace web3 technology are very much welcome to the idea of Neopets entering the web3 space. We think this proves that people are excited about the project, and they’re excited to see how it will develop. We’ve had 150 million users of Neopets throughout the years — probably 30 to 40% of them have already entered the web3 space. The challenge for us is figuring out how to market to these people and get them excited about this project. The goal would be to get them to follow us and rejoin us in the Metaverse. Connecting with those people is my favorite part of the NFT.NYC event.
That’s great to hear, and it’s also good to hear that we’re reaching more potential partners and being more active within this space. So, are there any plans for more NFT collections in the future?
As you would expect, seeing that the original Neopets game has tons of items and customizations for your Neopet, you can foresee that this type of game could have a high volume of microtransactions. We see a lot of these items could be turned into NFTs. Regarding collection launches, we’re trying to navigate that in a way that is exciting for Genesis NFT holders. We also use new collection opportunities to acquire new community members and draw people to the project. So there will be future collections. We already launched a fun one during Crypto Pizza Day last month. We held a free mint of Pizzaroo’s pizzas for that event. You can expect a lot more to be coming out soon, and we will update the community accordingly. We’re working with many other partners to collaborate on our future NFT launches. You can expect it would also be like some of the staple items from the original game. Stay tuned!
AMA — Community Questions
Question: So, will there be a secondary marketplace in the Metaverse? And if there is, how do you plan to stop price gouging?
There will be a marketplace inside the game for our players to trade many of these items. The way we look at it, we want this play-and-earn experience to be much more sustainable by accruing value through these NFTs. There will be gameplay to help players upgrade their NFTs or maybe turn them into more scarce items instead of purely accruing in value through the token system we also have in the game. We’re trying to let the players decide by having a decentralized free market where the price is determined by market supply and demand. I believe this free market system would help us have a balanced design and approach instead of us trying to set the price on every item.
So will the game be playable in VR?
Ah, that’s something we’re exploring. So, as you may know, NetDragon has invested in VR technologies in the past and within the gaming space. So there are some things that we could leverage with the support of our mother company. However, making a good VR is no small feat, and I would say it’s probably not something we could do in the short term. But in the long run, I think it’s something that we will continue to explore and would love to get more feedback from the community to see whether that’s something that we should explore sooner.
Question: Will Neopians who own NFTs have an advantage over non-NFT players, or will it be even for all players?
I think, as with all web3 projects, the value of being an early holder is in being able to grow with the project. We will give Genesis Neopians some VIP perks as the top supporters of the project. Will those perks be in their earning potential, airdrops of additional NFTs, priority for future collections, or some advantage in the gameplay? I think the thing is that we need to avoid a pay-to-win type of gameplay and prevent people from just buying a lot of our NFTs to have too much of an advantage. We need to do a lot of balancing in the gameplay, and our Alpha's goal is to test out a lot of the in-game balance and fine-tune as needed. Last time we discussed having seasonal updates on a quarterly basis. Those updates are also a way in which we can continue to collect feedback from the community and balance the free-to-play element, the play-and-earn element, but
also the NFT holder element. We can continue to fine-tune these elements to ensure that the game will successfully attract new players while also benefiting the original day one supporters. There will be a lot of this type of balancing, so it’s hard for us to guarantee the exact advantages for our NFT holders, but of course, NFTs will accelerate gameplay in some way. You’ll get some additional benefits here and there, but we know these early supporters would get some sort of a badge of honor to show that they were our biggest supporters from day one.
Question: For NFT.NYC, was the entrance fees and costs incurred paid by TNT or the Metaverse team?
The sponsorship fee and everything came from the Neopets Metaverse team. We’ve discussed this point in different ways, but to clarify: the Metaverse project is an independent project, and we received funding from our original NFT Mint. We also receive funding from Netdragon as seed investors, and we’re also raising funding from external investors (VC funds, etc.) to run this project as a separate entity. Although we receive support from the original TNT team when we have questions, their job is running the OG classic site. Our main point of collaboration is working closely to develop the lore, primarily to ensure that we stay true to the Neopets brand. Any costs that TNT incurs will be fully reimbursed. I also saw some questions regarding TNT staff at NFT.NYC. The way we saw this event was not just to promote Neopets Metaverse. It’s also a great way to promote the classic site to a lot of our old players who have played it in the past, and we are seeing increased engagement numbers on that front, as well as older players returning to the game, logging into their old accounts, and revisiting their Neopet experiences. This kind of cross-collaboration could be a win-win situation for Neopets Metaverse and the classic game.
Upcoming Updates
Thank you again to those that participated in our Town Hall!
We will continue to host town halls weekly or biweekly, so please tune in as we provide more project updates!
Also, keep an eye out for the release of our Litepaper! The Neopets Metaverse Litepaper will expand on the project in-depth, with summaries of our game systems, economic ecosystem, tokenomics, blockchain details, updated project timelines, and much more. We plan to release the Litepaper very soon and will keep the community in the loop regarding our progress!
As always, you can read our past Medium articles to catch up on our Neopets Metaverse updates, including our 3D visual reveals, core game loop, website updates, game trailer, and Genesis Neopian perks!
Follow us on our social channels for all the latest Neopets Metaverse news!
Website: https://neopetsmeta.io
Discord: https://discord.gg/neopets-metaverse
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NeopetsMeta
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neopetsmetaverse/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZoiGSOZbBkFw121fm0hf4Q
Disclaimer:
This article is issued on behalf of, and with the consent of Neopets Inc. and is intended for informational purposes only regarding potential future plans. It is not intended to be legally binding, nor is it intended to be an offer, solicitation, or advice of any kind. Any forward-looking statements or information involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual events to differ materially. No reliance should be placed on any such forward-looking statements or information. The initiatives in this article, if they proceed, may not be available to all persons in all jurisdictions and are subject to change. No regulatory authority in any jurisdiction has examined or approved this article or any part thereof. Please always read any applicable terms and conditions carefully and seek trusted advice as needed.
